The Prowl: When a Gal Needs a Man

After a week spent dealing with work crisis, illness, and a leaking gas pipe in my apartment, I gave in to gender stereotypes and called my boyfriend for consolation.

A close friend frequently likes to quote from a song whenever I mention my boyfriend; he will say: "What is love?  Baby don't hurt me."

This week was not my finest.  I had an absolute meltdown in our managing partner's office over our impending move: the hours I spent on the phone with Verizon, the daily bombardment of fabric swatches from the interior decorator, our bank switch which has involved much cat herding to assemble the necessary paperwork for, and – finally - my inability to fix our senior partner's laptop.  I also contracted the stomach flu that was circulating about our office.

Knowing I was having a tough week, my senior partner gave me some advice: something about life handing me lemons and making lemonade.  Fine advice, except it really felt as if the lemons were being pelted at me and it wasn’t entirely clear if this was supposed to make the lemonade process easier or more difficult.

The practical effect of all of this stress was that it was a trying several days of trying to keep it together while pretending I was capable of consuming solid food and while smiling politely through meetings that seemed as if they would never end.

By the time Thursday night came around, I hadn’t kept anything down in two days, had turned a sickly gray pallor, was beginning to think I might have a parasite, and had not yet been able to fix our senior partner's laptop despite several rounds with tech support.  To summarize, I was basically done with a long, long week.

Yet, when I got home, I was overcome by the smell of gas.  Surprisingly, a representative from Washington Gas came over immediately and was remarkably helpful in identifying the source of the problem.  It seems that when the guy (I can’t call him a “repairman”) my landlord calls to deal with plumbing or wiring or, well, anything installed my hot water heater, he didn’t do it correctly.  Instead, he used a pipe that was the wrong size.  This resulted in gas coming out of the heater when the pipe loosened from the wall.  I was told I would need a plumber to fix it and I would be without hot water until he did.

I’m not going to lie, my first call was to my mother who somehow figured out what was going on when for the second time this week I broke down into tears (and to preemptively answer my mother's question:  no, I don’t have my period; this isn’t a hormonal problem).  My second call was to my landlord to let him know what was going on.  He was in Costa Rica on vacation, but he offered to "call a guy."  Well, his "guy" seemed to be the source of the problem, so after some rather harsh words, we agreed that I would call someone and it would simply come out of a future month's rent.

While waiting for a plumber late Thursday night who never showed up, I finally called my boyfriend.  This is what boyfriends are for, after all.  I called him because in the end, I wanted what all girls want, as much as it pains me to admit it: I wanted him to be here and to understand fully what these valves and vents did and what the problem was.  Then, I wanted him to just take care of it.  Rather than fighting with my landlord and dealing with plumbers and watching the man from Washington Gas shake his head at me and make faces rather than tell me what was going on, I wanted this all to be on him - something that he could be big and strong and masculine about.  This is one area where I felt perfectly happy falling into every conceivable gender stereotype.  I just wanted my very lovely boyfriend to, well, basically do boy things.

In an era of gender equality, especially at a time when my female friends are outshining my male friends in terms of accomplishments, it is still nice to have someone to rely on to do the things that you don't want to.  At the end of the day, of course I took care of this as he was in New York and could frankly do very little.  I never doubted that this was a problem within my ability to cope with.  I never felt destitute.  My point is that having him around simply would've made it better.

As I already explained, he really couldn’t yell at a plumber for me given the circumstances, but he did prove to be a good listener and commiserated appropriately.  He said that he wished he could be with me.  Even if he didn’t mean it -- I mean, I wouldn’t want to be in an apartment with no hot water – it was still nice to hear.

This, of course, made me think about my friend's line (or actually having googled this, 90’s singer Haddaway's): "What is love?  Baby don't hurt me…"

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